Nature Likes To Minimize Quantity Part 1: The Fastest Route

This is a classical type of problem in physics. Imagine you are on the beach, and you throw a ball somewhere in the ocean. You the decide to have a race with someone who can get to the ball faster. Both of you run at the same speed, and when you enter the ocean, you slow down due to the water’s resistance. Therefore, the only thing that will affect who will win the race is what path each one of you takes. So the question is, which is the fastest path?

Waves and Rings

On Earth, one can indirectly find what the structure of inside the planet is by measuring the waves created by an earthquake. The Earth’s interior, having layers with different compositions, will refract and reflect those waves, and by measuring the wave all over the Earth, what can make a reasonable assumption as to what the Earth is like inside it. Unfortunately, we can’t exactly place seismographs in other planets. In the case of Saturn, though, there is a structure you can measure which will indirectly tell us what is going on inside the planet. It is the rings, which it turns out that while its shape is predominantly affected by Saturn’s moons, they alone don’t account for all the waves on it. The planet itself affects the rings, and one of the findings is that the inside of the planet is sloshing around. More details is in the link above.

Favorite Videogame Music Ever

This one is my favorite, Bramble Blast, which is a remix made for Super Smash Brawl of Stickerbrush Symphony from Donkey Kong Country 2:

This is the original Stickerbrush Symphony:

How Not To Introduce Casual Audiences To Quantum Mechanics

Like this (start from minute 13): 

So, I was watching the let’s play for the visual novel Remember 11 when something to my interest popped up, which was science. In it, quantum mechanics is used as a sci fi plot device to explain all the mysterious things going on, and it goes in an extremely lengthy exposition in order to explain it. Really lengthy. As you can see, the explanation goes over several videos. While I understand it, how the heck are the general audience supposed to understand that!? Granted, it is in character for the person doing the extremely long exposition, and some of the mysteries do require a lot of explanation. At the same time, they didn’t have add all the jargons in the tips section that explains the explanation because now the explanation that explains the explanation doesn’t explain anything anymore because no one gets it. For example, the mention of quantum bits in the entanglement entry and going off tangent to another tips entry of quantum bits was completely unnecessary, and it was a poor explanation of what entanglement was. Heck, the entanglement entry wasn’t necessary because it was explained in the EPR paradox explanation. And why is there an entry about unitary transformation? Think about the audience! While not all the tips entries are bad, and not everything in quantum mechanics can be explained simply to the lay audience, many of them felt like they were trying to be sophisticated for no reason at all.

By the way, this book is a good example of how you explain quantum mechanics. Although I will admit it kind of is not fair as the book has more than 100 pages to explain everything, the book doesn’t try to bash your head in with the term ‘unitary transformation’.

I Learned Programming

So, I recently learned the basics of programming due to Coursera. If you want the specifics, I learned Python. Using the template and assets the online class gave me, I made a basic shooting game, which you can check out here.

The controls are:

Space-shoot

Up-accelerate

Left/Right-turn around

Now, having tried out the game, I know what you are thinking. It sucks. Well, yes. First of all, I don’t know how to get around the ghosting effect of the keyboard because I am a noob at this. Second of all, if I had the time and energy, I would have added a bunch of stuff. The highest stuffs in my priority list would have been adding collisions to the rocks, increasing the difficulty as the game goes on, adding the explosion animation (which they were kind enough to give me, but didn’t take advantage of), and adding the start screen. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or the energy, so this piece of software will remain a blot to all of humanity for all eternity.

Horrible Punishment in the Maldives

So, a girl gets raped by her stepfather and you know what happens? She gets a 100 lash punishment. Yes, you got that right, she is going to get punished for having had no choice in getting raped. So sign the petition, and let the Maldive’s government know what you think of this crap.

By the way, don’t think this victim blaming stuff that only happens in other countries. Look at what happened recently in the US’s Stuebenville rape case. The victim got threats as the disgraceful US media continuously went on and on about how sorry we are supposed to feel for the boys who permanently damaged their lives. Yeah, CNN, they permanently damaged their lives. It is called consequences. It is something that happens when a person destroys another person’s life.

Seriously, fuck you all who feel sorry for rapists, you are terrible human beings.

Atmospheric Composition of Extrasolar Planets Detected

I didn’t think I would live to see the day, but they did it. Obviously I have underestimated way too much the capabilities of our current technology ^_^ . The planets did have the benefit of being far away from their parents star, and they are huge, but still, it is quiet the accomplishment. I also found a science paper (which I found thanks to this) about the spectroscopy of the planets, if you want to read it (beware, not for your average joe). Yeah, not much to say about this one, the links will tell you everything.